Yeah, I am cracking the fifty mark in life, yeah, I am just learning the secrets of many martial arts, and yeah, you need to a major nervous breakdown to re evaluate your priorities, or at least be leveled with an illness, as I have had, that almost totally takes you out of the game.

I am a working guy, a student of history, and a non lineage learner of many martial arts with no motive to profit or making it my living. It took actual demonstrations of techniques, with detailed explainations to convince me of their validity and get me beyond where you are, in your funk, to open my eyes to western training in arts and advanced eastern training.

When people speak of lineage, they allude to these secrets. Simply because that is the shortest path to knowledge by taking it from others who have been there? Well, sometimes you have to go find the answers because no one is gonna tell you.

I started martial arts late in life, and I treated it like a large puzzle with pieces scattered all over the world ... and I was right. If there are a dozen open books about this subject, that is a lot.

So talk about lineage, but what you are seeking is a shortcut.

And I consider myself a child, especially as I grow older. So why not play nice with the other children?

Once you are old, you lose that ego thing about big and strong ... the little old man who beats up the muscular guy in his twenties is what you want to be? Right?